What was the most painful thing I ever went through?!

 

(this post was from Open Diary, my first online journaling home, and when they were awesome, they used to post a "theme of the week". This was my response to that weeks theme.)

Without a doubt, the most painful thing I have ever gone through is the process and act or losing this woman. This is me and my mom. She passed away in December of 2006. The year she left us, this was the picture we took on opening day of the Oakland A’s. She was a rabid Bay Area baseball fan, really a fan of all baseball.

She was ready to go, but that didn’t make it suck any less. She had a massive stroke that pretty much decimated 3/4’s of her brain. Had she had a milder stroke, she would have woken with us talking about amputation for one of her feet, that had become gangrenous due to complications from type 2 diabetes.

She was my best friend. I miss her every day. There are a million ways in which I wish she was still here, or that I could talk to her again. But not at the cost of her continuing to live or being more disabled than she became at the end. She told me, once, near the end, “If anything happens to me, you let me go. I HATE being disabled! I have been a strong independent woman my entire life and now I’m not. I am done with this life, when it’s my time, I am ready to go.”

After the stroke, we had no way to take care of her at home, so she had to go to a nursing home. I lived with her in the nursing home until she passed. The sad and terrible thing about that is that it was a relatively new facility at the time and I was the first person who ever stayed with their loved one so they would not have to die alone.

Yeah, that. You only get to help your parents and loved ones die with dignity once. Put the paperwork in place if and as soon as you can. We didn’t do that and it caused more pain in the end, I think. But I will always be glad I advocated for my mom and her wishes.

Peace.

What was the most painful thing you ever went through? What did you learn from it?

Remember to tag your entry #TOTW68 down at the bottom, so it will end up on the Theme Page!